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4 Responses

The new part is only the part appearing at the bottom. The part at the top showing ads above the organic results has been around for a long time now. Since it's at the bottom of the page, I doubt it's going to have much effect on anything, since most people don't even scroll down that far.

The ads look pretty distinct to me... I wouldn't mistake those for organic results. I think most of us are trained at this point to know what are ads, and what aren't. Since the same background color is applied, I would imagine most people would get what's going on.

Obviously ads look pretty distinct to you and me ;-) We look at them all the time. As Internet-savvy users I think we tend to overestimate though what's "obvious" to others. It keeps surprising me when looking over the shoulder of non-tech savvy people using Google how often they don't realise the difference between organic and paid, especially when a paid listing is shown at the top of the page.

I would be surprised if it had any significant effect on Page 1 organic click-through-rates. However, it might reduce the number of people who scroll to page 2.

If someone has scrolled down all the way to the bottom, it often means that they haven't yet found what they are looking for. By putting ads down here Google is saying "Oh you didn't find anything there that you liked - how about these?". So where previously anywhere up to 10% of people would click to Page 2 and continue their search, some may now find themselves clicking on these paid listings instead

I haven't seen it anywhere naturally, but I agree that it will make it even more less likely for users to go to page 2 (out of those that did in the first place, that is). Since the page numbers are listed under the ads and not directly under the last organic result, those that are able to distinguish between paid and organic are likely to stop scrolling once they hit the ads.

On the flip side, users would no longer have the ads on the side of the page which cuts out clutter while they are viewing organic results.

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